


Kidnap

by mechanonymouse



Series: Hogwarts AUs [8]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fantastic residential schooling, Gen, Institutional Kidnap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-25 22:03:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14986544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mechanonymouse/pseuds/mechanonymouse
Summary: In this world, a fear was given voice that allowing Muggleborns return to their families after they began their education was a danger to the newly enacted Statute of Secrecy and that leaving Muggleborns uneducated was an even bigger danger. Arguments flew from those in favour of infanticide, to infant kidnapping, but cooler, possibly wiser heads prevailed and a law colloquially called Salazar’s Law, for all it was thought of centuries after his death was enacted.You would think that this would change everything but it doesn’t.





	Kidnap

In another world, there would be a letter delivered by an owl to parents and a child who had never received letter delivered in such a manner followed by a visit by a witch or wizard who would convince but fail to explain why their child was going to have to go to a boarding school the parents wouldn’t be able to talk about and learn such things as Transfiguration, Charms and Potions. But this is not that world. In this world, a fear was given voice that allowing Muggleborns return to their families after they began their education was a danger to the newly enacted Statute of Secrecy and that leaving Muggleborns uneducated was an even bigger danger. Arguments flew from those in favour of infanticide, to infant kidnapping, but cooler, possibly wiser heads prevailed and a law colloquially called Salazar’s Law, for all it was thought of centuries after his death was enacted.

 

It wasn’t a kind law, or by the time this story is told necessarily a good law in its current form, but it was the law. At 7am on the 31st July, all across the country witches and wizards knocked at doors as they did every year with a pamphlet of parchment for the parents to sign and wand easily accessible. Uniformly, they left ten minutes later with a child never to return whether the parents understood or consented. The testing hall was the Hogwarts Great Hall the children and their ministry minders arrived at 7:10am outside the front gates and were made to march down the main path to Hogwarts in whatever state of undress they had been in when the ministry officials arrived. At 7:30am they were each seated at a individual desk in the Great Hall a glass of water and unbuttered toast in front of them.

 

At 8am, their breakfast disappeared and the ministry proctor began the exams, a test of reading, writing and arithmetic with a foreign writing equipment, no preparation, and immediately after having been kidnapped with no explanation yet given as to why or how they were kidnapped.

 

At noon, the exam papers were collected with a wave of the proctor’s wand and food appeared in front of the children. Pottage, brown bread and small beer served with a knife and spoon only. Half an hour later, the food disappeared, eaten or not and the children were separated, male and female in to different antichambers.

 

From the antechamber, each child was lead in to a tiled room with a showerhead at one end and a simple undyed shift hanging from a hook at the other. When they disrobed, their Muggle clothing vanished and they left the room clean, cold, and with nothing left of where they came from. In the next room they were examined by a medi-witch, vaccinated and checked for disease then pushed through Floo to a house.

 

They arrived in a living room and a witch or a wizard depending on gender who hands them a pile of old fashioned or Wizarding clothing, a sheaf of parchment, a quill and a bottle of ink. They were taken to a dorm where they were shown their bed and the plain wooden trunk at its base. They were instructed to put their spare clothes and writing equipment away tidily and were brusquely informed how to dress. No questions were answered to the new arrival or any of the children already there and they were left alone until the room fills.

 

When the last child had dressed and packed their spare items away they were led downstairs a dining room by the witch and wizard where similarly stodgy fare as lunch appeared on the table in front of them with just a knife and spoon. There was not and will never be any talking at the table.

 

From the dining room they were sent upstairs to wash up and then to a classroom. For the first time the beginnings of what, where and why they are there was explained in a droning tone by the wizard.

 

Their life falls into a routine. Wake, wash in basins that fill with from a jug with cold water behind screens, troop downstairs to breakfast of porridge in silence watched by the judgemental gaze of the witch and wizard. The mornings were spent copying out primers in the classroom with witch and then gender segregated chores until another silent lunch. After lunch there were lectures in the classroom from the wizard about the history, culture, etiquette, and dangers of the world they have been dragged into broken only by a break for supper. After the last lecture they trooped back upstairs to dorms where they hurry to undress before the lights abruptly shut off. This was the same every day for two weeks. When the routine was broken by the visit of Garrick Ollivander and his collection of wands. Things changed before he arrives. Rather than spending the first two hours after breakfast painstakingly copying the alphabet with quill and ink, they were sent to do chores first then confined to their dorms. One at the time they were called downstairs to the classroom where the strange man asked them their wand hand and birth date then handed them wand after wand until one meets his approval. For the first time magic seemed joyous as they felt the power beneath their hands. They were sent back upstairs, with books and school uniforms to add to their trunks.

 

After that they returned to their routine until the 1st of September where rather than chores or primers, after breakfast they were required to bring their trunks downstairs and place them in seemingly horseless carriages which they rode to a station. At the station they met a train full of students.

 

They won’t return to the house again until 30th June as fifth years and then for a month directly after seventh year as they wait for the results of their NEWTs, instead they will be separated by house at the Sorting and spend their summers in different boarding houses.

 

You would think that this would change everything but it doesn’t. Dumbledore still wanted a Paschal Lamb to take away his sins more than he cared about the wellbeing of one child. He still left an orphan to be mistreated at a Muggle orphanage and he still left a toddler at the door of a Muggle home on a November night. This Petunia knew nothing of the Wizarding world that wasn’t whispered by an angry child she didn’t believe, a child who like her sister disappeared into the night the year they turned eleven. She didn’t watch her sister draw away from her year on year; bringing fear into her world. She didn’t know her sister was married or that she had a child when she opened the door with a scream to an infant. She and her husband had no idea to connect the Potters or the strange going ons to her sister. They didn’t believe they could beat the magic out of Harry. Vernon was still a bully and encouraged the same traits in his son but this Petunia wouldn’t hit Harry with a frying pan; that would require acknowledging he existed.

 

Harry Potter played unsupervised in the front garden from the moment he arrived until Dudley was old enough to play there, then he played alone in the street, the distance he was encouraged to go gradually increasing until Harry was only on Privet Drive when asleep in his cupboard by the time he was five. He skipped more meals in this world, forgotten alone in the dark of his cupboard under the stairs or out wandering unsupervised and went to school with no lunch or eaten by Dudley on the rare occasions his Aunt remembered pack him one until his teachers arranged for one annual payment for school meals. He started school in a uniform bought at the supermarket at 4pm the Sunday before the first day because none of Dudley’s fit and she’d forgotten about him until then. Whatever protections that might have grown from Petunia and Vernon’s micromanaging attempts to making him normal failed when exposed to such apathy.

 

She expected to wake up to him gone and the letter was the first time she ever really acknowledged him to scream, “Why him, not Lily?” She wrote back and, in this world as the other, an unsuitable escort of Hagrid was provided by Dumbledore to his sacrifice. This Harry was stared at not just for being Harry but for his complete lack of manners and the inappropriate Muggle clothes he wore. He learned nothing more in this world than he did in the other and was returned with his now full trunk to his cupboard. They didn’t take him to London; Petunia left the money for a train ticket and a train timetable on the trunk taking up most of the space in his cupboard and they continued to ignore him fully expecting to never see him again.

 

There was some awkwardness on the train when Harry admitted to Ron that he had no idea how to put his uniform on and that these strange Muggle clothes were all he had. A borrowed shift and uncomfortable conversation later and he was dressed for school and had the name of a clothing shop Ginny liked to look at the catalogues from he could get hold of appropriate clothes, hopefully quickly. There was the same confrontation with Draco and Neville still lost his toad although no-one helped him look. There was no Hermione to look down her nose at the prank spell from the twins. This Hermione first saw a copy of _Hogwarts: A History_ on her first trip to the library so she didn’t spout facts about the ceiling to calm her nerves but she still read all her books from cover to cover before she arrived at Hogwarts - this time by moonlight and then by Lumos under her blankets when homesickness and fear made her want to cry. Ron was still proud and quick to anger and this Hermione has far more reason to cry. They still fought a troll but this Hermione was slower to want to prove herself to her teachers and slower to forgive someone who wasn’t stolen into this world unknowing three months prior but still knew less than her. Ron and Harry still got points and none were deducted from Hermione so they do better overall and a friendship still developed. The Paschal Lamb passed his first test and was sent back to Privet Drive to continue to wait in ignorance. Hermione didn’t speak to him for the journey home before she joined the rest of the Gryffindor Muggleborns for their journey to their boarding house.

 

The Dursleys didn’t arrive at Kings Cross to collect him instead a letter from Dumbledore told him he was to make his own way back to Privet Drive. Petunia dropped her teacup when she saw him and informed him in a clipped voice she didn’t want to see him between 7am and 10pm, later if they had guests. Harry didn’t have to sneak to do his summer homework nor was he locked in his cupboard at any point. Dudley’s Second Room is still Dudley’s Second Room. Dobby might have been intercepting his post but Hermione was still too angry to send any and Ron will never in any world be a good correspondent. Anyway, Dobby won’t show himself in a park or library filled with Muggles and Harry took his aunt at her word leaving Privet Drive before seven every morning and not returning until nearly midnight. When his letter arrived with his book list he took off to London, leaving a note on the kitchen table, spent the rest of the summer at the Leaky Cauldron and made his own way to Kings Cross without meeting Ginny, Dobby or Lucius Malfoy.

 

Ginny still gave herself to the Diary and Harry still heard voices no one else could hear and spoke to snakes in public. Unspoken Harry and Hermione make peace; she wants to go back to her loving Muggle family and he would like to never see his neglectful family ever again. In this world neither will get what they want and being angry at each other was pointless. Despite his best efforts, this Harry was not yet Dumbledore’s man but that wasn’t necessary for Fawkes to bring the hat and Harry was still a Gryffindor. Dobby was never freed in this world. Harry arrived at the barrier early and he wasn’t particularly inclined to believe the strange creature he met while still lying in his hospital bed just after it nearly killed him.

 

Again he was sent back to Privet Drive, he didn’t expect the Dursleys to collect him and made his way to the train automatically. Petunia wasn’t surprised to see him this time and didn’t feel the need to repeat herself. As he wandered the town he saw a big black dog often enough to wonder if someone from Privet Drive abandoned it but left it behind in Surrey when he took off to the Leaky Cauldron again when his letter arrived just before Aunt Marge. There was no-one waiting, catching the train to London from Surrey and leaving a note on the kitchen table doesn’t attract Ministry attention like blowing up a Muggle and Mrs Figg stopped expecting to see him daily or other than first thing in the morning by the time he was eight.

 

This Harry met Mr Weasley for the first time the night before they leave for Hogwarts. He hadn’t developed any relationship so Arthur didn’t pull him of to the side and warn him that Sirius is looking for him. Harry doesn’t do any better with Dementors in this world; so he still fainted and still got Lupin to teach him the Patronus Charm and Lupin still didn’t want to expose the class to Harry’s boggart. He didn’t bother to ask the Dursleys to sign his form but there was no-one to sign Hermione’s form anyway and no money for her or any other Muggleborn to spend at Hogsmeade so instead they spent the weekends with the other Muggleborn. Harry finds he fits in easier here and that they had the same questions he did when he first arrived but they know the answers after weeks of classes. You could tell a Muggleborn apart no matter what year or House they were in. Their Hogwarts uniform was exactly as required and when a Hogwarts uniform wasn’t appropriate they wore The Brown, a ill fitting, coarsely woven, outdated outfit in varying shades of brown and grey depending on how second hand it was. The unaltered uniforms passed between students as they grew with last years books. The only thing a Muggleborn owned was their wand.

 

Ron came back full of tales of sweets and pranks, though none that made it into either Hermione or Harry’s hands and developed friendships with half-blood and other pureblood boys in their year. Hermione still took every class at the start of the year and still walked out of Divination early and her time turner still saved Sirius. Sirius still offered Harry a home and had to rescind that offer in the same night as he fled the country. The Marauders Map still falls back into Remus’s hands, though it’s the twins who lost it and Harry never learnt of its existence or connection to his father. There was no Crookshanks to steal Neville’s list of passwords or press the knot on the tree but Ron still blamed Hermione for his pet’s disappearance and not being sympathetic enough especially when she reported the Firebolt to Hooch, her fury at McGonagall for her part in Hermione’s abduction and Harry’s return too strong to talk to her head of house. Ron never apologises, not after the rat is found alive and proven not to be a rat nor after Sirius gifts him his own owl and this Hermione is long trained in how to hold a grudge without seeming to.

 

Knowing that someone wanted him made going back to the neglect of the Dursleys harder. Like normal, Harry took the train back to Surrey from London on his own and spent the summer loitering around Little Whinging from early in the morning until late at night. His post wasn’t intercepted so he gets the invitation to join the Weasleys at the Quidditch World Cup which he leapt at. Whether she was invited or not is never confirmed by Ron but Hermione doesn’t join them and her sole letter to Harry after he arrives at the Burrow doesn’t mention the Cup.

 

Harry’s name came out the Cup, and Ron doesn’t believe him anymore in this world. This Hermione didn’t attempt intercede between the two but breathed a sigh of relief and kept on trying to keep Harry alive long enough to finish school. It was Ginny who bartered their meeting and who sucked her crush up to pass on the information that Ron has to Harry. She had no relationship with Hermione to rely on, seeing the older girl at a distance only and barely more with Harry. What she saw of the sullen, angry, teen didn’t impress her and it was easy to accept Neville’s invite to the Yule Ball and easier still to tumble into a broom cupboard with Stephen Cornfoot and then Zacharias Smith. Harry still forgave Ron, enjoyed Hogsmeade weekends with Ron and the rest of their Wizard raised classmates without looking back at his old Muggleborn friends, won the tournament and dragged a dead body back from the graveyard with him leaving a resurrected dark lord behind. Dumbledore still gave his useless speech, Fudge still denied the possibility and turned his efforts to maligning Dumbledore and Harry. Despite this Harry was sent back to Privet Drive, this year with better watchers. He was still attacked by dementors while walking home but there was no Dudley to be harmed to just Mrs Figg waiting out worried that it was gone two and he still wasn’t back.

 

There was still a farce of a trial and the rest of the summer at Grimmauld Place with the Weasleys and Sirius  but there was no Hermione. Dumbledore still avoided Harry and passed Occulmency over to Snape. Voldemort still sent Harry a false vision, Harry still led his friends to a trap and still watched his godfather fall through the veil. Umbridge, like any bully, had a good grasp of who has power; she disbanded permanently the clubs the Muggleborn used to meet up and banned groups of more than five meeting in the castle during Hogsmeade weekends. The DA didn’t start with a mass meeting in the Hogshead with no control of who was there; it started as idle chat between Muggleborns in an unused classroom one Hogsmeade weekend and became a serious plan the next. They didn’t have an elf on staff to find out about the Room of Requirement so they used empty rooms, met at random times and studied as often in split groups in common rooms as all together. There was no damning parchment list declaring them Dumbledore’s Army just a master set of notes and the names of students being tutored by other students. It only takes five to run a class, one to teach and supervise and four to learn. There are Muggleborn in Slytherin - less than in other Houses, maybe, but they are there and there are neutral parties, or at least neutral enough, to learn with a mudblood if it means a better chance at passing your defence OWL. Dumbledore was still forced to leave the castle but it is not an action that builds trust in Harry. Instead it looked more like a general choosing to surrender the field to win the battle and leaving his subordinates to fall. McGonagall still took five stunners to the chest in Hagrid’s defence after months of detentions that were really just study sessions for troublesome lower years, a blind eye turned to upper years who troubled only Umbridge and discrete suggestion and aid. That did endear her to the student body even those to whom her name was associated first with kidnapping.

 

He was escorted back to the Dursleys this year by Kingsley Shacklebolt and Nymphadora Tonks; they informed Petunia that he was to remain inside the house and gardens until they came to collect him. She and Harry looked blankly at them; there was no room for him in this house, at fifteen, nearly sixteen he barely fit in his cupboard. Instead he left the house at six the next morning and spent the summer wandering the neighbourhood like normal until a letter from Dumbledore arrived. He let himself be used as a bribe to collect a new professor and then be dropped off at the Burrow like a tool put away until next time it was needed. Like normal there was no Hermione during the summer so they spent their days playing pick up Quidditch games, evenings playing chess and forgot to do their summer homework until the night before. She used to write long letters but neither he nor Ron were ever very good at replying so she stopped and let their silent disinterest in what she did without them speak for itself. They met her on the train scrambling to finish four feet on inanimate to animate transfiguration for their Head of House; she rolled her eyes and disappeared into another carriage. She would keep Harry alive until his master led him to his death but she didn’t care if he passed his classes. It’s only when they’re most of the way to Hogwarts that Harry sees her for long enough to speak to at the first of Slughorn’s club meetings.

 

There’s no confundus from Hermione to win Ron his spot on the team, she didn’t go to the Quidditch trials and he won his place through pure favouritism. Nor was there an awkward date with Cormac McLaggen to make Ron jealous, she went with a seventh year Slytherin Muggleborn who kept his hands at a respectable height all evening and talked with the other guests as animatedly as she did. Later Ron cursed him in the back in as they walk down a corridor. Harry took Luna and blew her off to follow his obsession with Malfoy. He still had his meandering, irregular meetings with Dumbledore who still waited until the last moment to reveal the reason for them. He still found the Prince’s book when offered a place in Slughorn’s class, still used the spells and potions without knowing where they came from, still cursed Malfoy with a spell for enemies with no idea what it did. Dumbledore still died at his spy’s hand; that was his choice and he still left his sacrifice with an impossible mission and incomplete information.

 

It’s not until Dumbledore’s funeral that Ron and Harry realised how little they had seen of Hermione this year. She rolled her eyes at Harry’s cheating, made sure to be on the opposite side of the classroom when he decided to use the book in Potions and laughed at Ron’s PDA with Lavender with the rest of their year but most of the time she hadn’t been there. When Harry was obsessively following Draco, there had be no Hermione to join Ron in discouraging him, when he was ignoring Dumbledore’s mission for him to spend more time with Ginny she wasn’t looking disapprovingly at him. She glared, dry eyed at the impressive tomb Dumbledore is interred in and there were no tears cried in to Ron’s shoulder. She told them she’ll see them at the Burrow on 1st August and left them at Dumbledore’s grave side and they did’t see or hear from her again until she was stood in the Burrow kitchen a determined frown on her face as let Molly try to lay down the law.

 

There was no sensation of the protections falling when the Order comes to collect Harry but Voldemort still knew when and where to find him and believed in Dumbledore enough not to test the supposed protections. They still used Dumbledore’s plan and Hagrid and Moody still died in the process.

 

The Ministry fell on Bill and Fleur’s wedding day and they started their drawn out search. Dumbledore still left his cryptic inheritance to guide his lamb to the slaughter but Harry burned with Voldemort’s anger and the Prophet screamed the escape of the magic stealing Muggleborns. Hermione read their stolen copy, a smile playing over her lips. Ron still left although he didn’t ask Hermione to come and she didn’t cry for him, Snape still guided Harry to the pool where Ron saved him. They still came to the castle and found the final horcruxes. Snape still died looking at Lily’s eyes and spilling his master’s last secrets. Harry might not have trusted Dumbledore implicitly but the old man still wove his manipulations tight enough to leave him no other option than to die. There were less and more people to join them at the final battle. Not all of Slytherin left and those that did pull the rest of the lower years out of the castle with them leaving no-one under fifteen to die in this war even if doing so put them at risk. None of the Muggleborn students who escaped before the ministry fell came back; there was no-one in this castle bar Hermione who wasn’t born to this world or graduated before she started Hogwarts. They fought and far too many died far too young to kill a mad man but leave most of his supporters alive and free.

 

Things still go back to normal. Harry isn’t a revolutionary out to change the world he loves; instead everything fell back to normal, and nineteen years later he stands at Platform 9¾ with his wife, best mate and best mate’s wife seeing off his sons. The Muggleborn stand apart in the Brown as much now as they did when he was at school but they are as invisible to him. He doesn’t notice how few Muggleborn there are coming from the boarding houses. The DMLE don’t deal with collecting Muggleborn so he doesn’t realise how few have been newly collected since the war, doesn’t think about his old friend he hasn’t seen since the final battle. Doesn’t think about the Death Eaters who walked free or that this world is exactly as he found it twenty-six years prior.


End file.
